A Brilliant Red Thread named one of the Portland Mercury’s favorite books of 2024

Available from LeftWingBooks.net

Good political writing is incendiary. It strikes a balance between the historian and the propagandist, while also (ideally) not coming off as the ravings of a complete crank. Northwest writer Don Hamerquist never wrote for a mass audience; he mostly organized behind the scenes of the American revolutionary left. A “Red Diaper Baby,” born to communist parents, Hamerquist joined the party during the red scare of the ’50s, and later the influential leftist collective Sojourner Truth Organization in the ’60s and ’70s. A Brilliant Red Thread is a collection of Don’s work that could have easily disappeared in the cloud, had editor Luis Brennan not set out to compile some of Hamerquist’s most important ideas and advice—given to generations of activists over the past 20 years, amidst political listservs, email chains, and obscure blogs. For those feeling politically lost, or like much of the response to an emboldened global right wing is ineffective, Hamerquist writes clearly and critically about what is to be done. Most importantly, it comes with a powerful hopefulness, a feeling that despite our losses we are living agents in history, that together our actions can change it.
—CAMERON CROWELL, Portland Mercury